<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/28/no-social-media-is-not-the-same-thing-as-lead-paint/>
"A few months back I attended a workshop regarding keeping children on the
internet safe, and at some point a debate broke out over whether social media
was “more like” cigarettes or chocolate (i.e., obviously addictive and harmful
or just a little unhealthy in large doses), and a long term trust & safety
executive who was in the room told me it was driving them crazy, because it’s
just not an analogy that works. Chocolate and cigarettes are things you
literally consume in your body, and they have a clear, and pretty well
understood, impact on your body.
Social media… is speech.
Speech can have an
impact on people: it can motivate them, inspire them,
scare them, etc. And sometimes those impacts can be negative. But speech alone
is not something you metabolize. It does not change your body. It does not
poison you.
It is not a toxin.
And that’s why it’s so frustrating that this analogy keeps popping up. The
latest is from Ashwin Vasan, the Commission of the New York City Department of
Health. He could be dealing with all sorts of actual health problems facing New
Yorkers, but instead decided to pen a nonsense opinion piece falsely declaring
social media the equivalent of known toxins."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
